BLUFF CITY -- Of all the great state parks in Arkansas, White Oak Lake State Park is one of my favorites.
Its centerpiece is, of course, White Oak Lake, which is divided into upper and lower sections. Lower White Oak is known for giant largemouth bass and crappie, but White Oak Lake State Park Superintendent John Stewart said campers have caught some of the year's biggest bass, including 10-pounders, from the bank at the campground in Upper White Oak.
"They catch a lot of catfish up here, too," Stewart said. "Every time it rains, catfish stack up in the creek here by the office, and they catch a bunch."
Rusty Pruitt of Bryant and I visited Thursday afternoon in the wake of a heavy rain. The sun burst forth about the time we launched the boat, and the conditions became still, hot and very humid. We rejoiced with every little gust as we fished the western end and its vast array of targets.
The upper section is reminiscent of Lake Conway. It is shallow but deceptively open. If you stray from the boat lane, you'd better go slow because you will collide with submerged stumps you cannot see beneath the tannin-stained water. Though they are boating hazards, the stumps potentially hold fish, especially those nearest the Mill Creek channel.
Water tupelo trees dot many of the flats on the western side of the lake, and large grassbeds fringe many of the banks, which also hold a large assortment of fallen trees, branches and brush. For anglers, the effect is like a fishing pinball machine, with a dizzying gallery of spinners, bumpers, bull's-eyes, kickers and droppers.
As with pinball machines, many of these targets are are like five-point bumpers. They make a lot of noise to be worth only five points. It's more profitable to devote your energy to the high-scoring targets, but it takes multiple visits to the lake to identify and determine when and why they are in play.
Upper White Oak is a bit low, so we were not surprised that we did not catch bass in the grassbeds or among exposed wood cover on the banks.
We were surprised that we didn't catch any fish under the docks. When you skip a lure under a dock all the way to the bank, you expect to be rewarded with a strike. When that doesn't happen, you get disgusted.
We might have done well flipping jigs or soft plastic lures against the tupelo trees, but we were in too much of a hurry. This was more of a scouting trip, and we were trying to cover as much water and absorb as much intel as possible in a compressed amount of time.
About 6 o'clock, a small flotilla launched at the beginning of a small tournament.
"We ought to follow them and see how they do it," Pruitt said.
We headed their direction but were distracted by a lot of surface activity on a large stump-ringed flat. Bass plunked at shad all over the surface, sometimes knocking them a foot in the air, but they were always about 20 yards beyond casting range. We tried to follow fish with the trolling motor and finally decided to stay put and wait for something to happen nearby.
Finally a bass broke a few feet from the boat, and I caught it with a small Whopper Plopper, a surface lure that has been very effective for me the past two years. It was a small bass, about the size of most that chased shad on the flat.
In the distance we saw three boats clustered at the Highway 387 bridge.
We idled that direction and asked two anglers in a bass boat if they were catching any. They were not, but two guys in a boat on the other side of the bridge, in Lower White Oak, caught a pair of small largemouths. They were Justin Swayze and Michael Gross, both of Gurdon. They were fishing the tournament and catching their bass on Yamamoto Senkos. White Oak Lake has big bass, Swayze said, but it supports a very large number of 8- to 10-inch bass, the size that seemed most active.
"It's got some giant crappie, though," Swayze said. "They opened it up so you could keep crappie on Jan. 1, and they've been hauling some huge slabs out of here."
Unlike Upper White Oak, Lower White Oak is undeveloped. It is also very narrow and thick with cypress trees. It's custom made for jig and worm fishing, which Pruitt demonstrated with a succession of bass that he caught on a Zoom Tiny Lizard. They were the same size as every other bass we saw.
The tournament wound down as the sun set, and Pruitt and I hastened back to the ramp while we could still see the navigation buoys.
As we loaded the boat, children's laughter mixed with the scent of burning charcoal wafted over from the campground. The night was cool, and it made me look forward to returning in the fall, when the big fish get active.
Sports on 08/12/2018